


The Pretty Hell

by mylittleredgirl



Category: Stargate Atlantis RPF
Genre: Comment Fic, F/M, RPF, Unresolved Sexual Tension, archived evidence of my dubious morality, cast shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 11:22:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21270233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylittleredgirl/pseuds/mylittleredgirl
Summary: One of those livejournal comment-fic collections: sgarpf edition.





	1. just call him samson

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phrenitis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phrenitis/gifts), [Peanutbutterer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peanutbutterer/gifts).

> they're very pretty. i don't know what to tell you.

Torri doesn’t know who starts it (Rachel, probably), but since 8 am, everyone’s been messing with Joe’s hair.  
  
“Would you _stop!?”_ he says, definitely more pissed than amused, and it’s probably evil of her, but sometimes she finds it charming when he can’t take a joke.  
  
At least Leeann isn’t declaring a holy war on the pranksters. “His hair’s a mess _anyway_,” she points out, as she fusses with Torri’s hair for the eighth time that day. “I don’t really think they could hurt the situation.”  
  
On the other side of the set, Jason scrubs his hand over Joe’s head as he walks past and there’s some indignant squawking. Torri hasn’t yet gotten in on the joke, but she’s enjoying it from the sidelines.  
  
“Besides,” Leeann continues between hairspray pumps, “the crazier his hair gets, the higher the ratings. Or, so Rob tells me.”  
  
“You know the last convention I went to, I got four separate questions about Joe’s hair?”  
  
Leeann rolls her eyes. “Seriously. Most notable hair I’m ever responsible for, and I don’t _do anything_ to it. He wakes up like that, you know?”  
  
“I know,” Torri replies, maybe too emphatically, because Leeann shoots her an upraised eyebrow. “I mean, _I know_, I’ve seen him roll out of his trailer at all hours. And I didn’t get a single question about _my_ hair. Do we really have to do this every time?”  
  
Leeann smiles sweetly. “It’s not my fault your hair isn’t fangirl bait.”  
  
“That’s a phrase now?”  
  
“Yep. Joe told me he heard it somewhere. I think he made it up himself.”  
  
Across the set, Joe is lecturing Rachel about _professionalism_ while holding his hands up to shield his head.  
  
“I like to threaten him sometimes with shaving his head,” Leeann continues. “He freaks out. I think it’s the source of his acting power.”  
  
“I’d freak out! His hair is the source of _my_ acting power.” At least, it’s the source of her crossing her arms a lot in scenes to avoid the temptation to reach over and run her fingers through it. She’s in character when the cameras are rolling, of course, but Torri’s pretty sure that Elizabeth Weir would _also_ want to know exactly what sounds he’d make if she did that.  
  
“Stargate: Atlantis, a spinoff about hair in other galaxies.”  
  
Torri laughs. “Starring Leeann, our chief hairstylist, of course.”  
  
Leeann curtseys. Jason grabs Joe in a headlock and noogies him.  
  
“You’re done,” Leeann says. “Try to stay _inside_ until the scene films, okay?”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Now go rescue our leading man. Or torture him some more, whichever.”  
  
There are merits to both options, of course, but Torri’s going to pick the one that lets her play with his hair.


	2. john's jacket

He knew it wasn’t a good idea to loan her pieces of his clothing (well, MGM’s clothing), but her teeth were chattering, and what was he going to do? When Rachel asked for Ronon’s long coat in defense against the cold, Jason wrapped her in a bear hug instead, and well, Joe doesn’t want to be unchivalrous but he wasn’t going to do _that_.  
  
It’s his new rule (a secret rule - he isn’t about to share it with anyone else lest they ask _why_ he has imposed a strict no-touching-Torri edict on himself). Torri is the tactile type; she hugged him for the first time after their initial screen test, and it hadn’t even seemed strange. Over the past few years, though, he’s become more than a passive recipient — he realized it a few weeks ago when he waited outside her trailer for twenty minutes to hug her goodnight because his day had sucked and, well, she always made it _better_, and really, he should have just gone home and hugged _his wife_.  
  
Hence, the new rule.  
  
It’s possible, though, that this is no better. Torri looks adorable huddled in his costume jacket, shivering from her wet hair and the icy breeze rattling the trailer they’re all holed up in, waiting for the call to places. She laughs out loud when Jason and Rachel start play-fighting over how best to position themselves to share body heat. Joe feels a little left out, actually, and cold from having given up his jacket, and Torri’s lips are just the slightest bit blue and he _aches_ to kiss her (kiss _Elizabeth Weir_, he mentally corrects, kiss her _in character_, he can’t consider anything other than that, even though he has an oversized sweater at home that he’d really love to see her in).  
  
“Are you okay?” Torri asks, and her expression conveys exactly how strange he must look while trying to control his thoughts.  
  
“Just cold.”  
  
“Can’t have your jacket back,” Torri says, wrapping her arms around herself dramatically. “Mine now.”  
  
“You’ll have to give it back when we start shooting,” he points out, because he knows being patiently logical drives her nuts and she’ll roll her eyes and smile in that way he loves. Loves as a _coworker._  
  
“Nope. I’m gonna let Andy know that I jumped Sheppard right before this scene, and Weir gets to keep the jacket.”  
  
Jason and Rachel both laugh. Torri bites the edge of the jacket collar possessively. Joe tries very hard to remember that her biting his jacket isn’t at all sexy, at all, even though he’s imagining her doing that while he’s wearing it.  
  
“The rain’s making you crazy,” he accuses Torri. “I can’t believe they don’t just call this for the night.”  
  
“I’m good,” Rachel says, curling up in Jason’s lap. “I’ll just sleep here.”  
  
Torri draws her knees up and leans against a wall. “Me too.”  
  
“What about me?” Joe asks, and he really shouldn’t.  
  
Torri smiles at him, lips still painfully tempting. “I’ll share. But the jacket’s still mine.”


	3. the last time they were at this bar...

The last time they were at this bar, he kissed her.  
  
They were drunk as hell, and Paul was doing a karaoke duet with someone he’d just met, and Torri’s hand had been on Joe’s thigh all night and he snapped around 1 a.m. and kissed her like his life depended on it.  
  
He doesn’t know how long it lasted — a few badly rendered songs, at least — but he knows she was warm and her mouth moved perfectly with his and her hands slipped under the back of his shirt and he was hard in his jeans when they finally pulled apart and it was probably the best idea of his life.  
  
Worst idea.  
  
So he’s nervous sitting in the same booth in the same bar, watching Rachel belt out _Natural Woman_ like a pro, wanting Torri to show up even though she’s already two hours late, or wanting her _not_ to show up, or just _wanting_. He fantasizes about giving the cab driver her address at the end of the night and knocking on her door, forgetting himself and his marriage and his life and _being with her_ like he’s thought about every single day since that kiss.  
  
“You gonna get up there?” Jason asks, kicking him under the table.  
  
“No way,” Joe replies. There’s not enough alcohol in the city for that. (Probably not enough in the _province_ to excuse the other thing he’s thinking about.)  
  
Torri arrives, two and half hours late, with two of her girlfriends that Joe doesn’t know. She’s already hammered and lands in Jason’s lap, giggling, and the grin on Jason’s face makes Joe wince with jealousy, even though he knows Torri and Jason’s friendship has nothing to do with _that_. Jason leads Torri and her friends into one of the back rooms of the club and they come back, smelling of pot.  
  
Joe doesn’t get high, but he wonders, for a second, if that would be enough, if that would let him push past the fear in his chest that keeps him from following her home every night from the set (and it’s awful to say, but he really does think it’s fear, and not responsibility or commitment or loyalty to his family that’s keeping him from telling her how she’s the only thing he dreams about anymore).  
  
Torri doesn’t sit next to him, maybe on purpose, even though he saved a seat. She lets Paul drag her onto the stage and sings something drunk and off-key and Joe’s heart is racing as he watches her, but she doesn’t ever catch his eye.  
  
He finally corners her outside, where she’s gone to smoke (she only smokes when she drinks, calls it her last vice). It’s raining but they’re under an overhang, and he doesn’t want to talk, doesn’t want to explain himself, just wants to _kiss her_ to the sound of the bass pounding through the building walls.  
  
“I wasn’t going to come,” she tells him, and blows a trail of smoke.  
  
He shakes his head. “You shouldn’t have to do that.”  
  
“I know.” She nods, flushed with alcohol and the cool air outside, and her eyes trail down his body. “But I’m trying to be good, you know?”  
  
Energy is boiling in his gut, in his chest. “I like it when you’re bad.”  
  
She looks suddenly serious. “Do you?”  
  
He plucks the cigarette from her fingers, nudges her back to the wall, and kisses her, _finally_. One of her hands buries into his hair, the other wraps around his back, and she tastes like smoke and he’d hate that on anyone other than her. Her hips rock against his and it feels so good and _not enough_, and all he wants, _all he wants_ is to be inside her, to make love to her all night before either of them ask any hard questions.  
  
Her cigarette has burned down to the filter before they pull apart.  
  
“This isn’t good,” she tells him, breathless, but her hands are still on his hips.  
  
He doesn’t feel guilty. He knows he should, but Katherine and LA feel so far away that it’s like another life and here, _this_ life, is filled with Torri, and more and more, he wants everything about her.


End file.
